Evaline:
It started as a twinge in my gut. The kind that whispered something was off, even if everything seemed perfectly in place on the surface.
River was back into his usual self - cold, distant, wearing that detached expression like a second skin. He looked every bit the powerful Alpha he always did, with his hair gleaming under the soft light of the early sun and his shoulders squared as he drove in silence.
But as I sat beside him in the passenger seat, with my arms folded and attention locked on the woods outside, that feeling in my gut kept growing stronger.
It wasn't just one thing. It was everything.
The way his fingers were tapping restlessly on the steering wheel when he thought I wasn't watching. The way his jaw clenched every time his phone buzzed and he ignored it. Or the way he was completely ignoring my presence. It was not with his usual arrogance, but as if he was genuinely… uneasy.
This shift in him... made me uneasy.
